Skinning WAS Change the Green Online Icon to an Icon reflecting the IM Protocol?

[Evan Schoenberg]

I strongly agree that Adium provides wide-ranging theming  
capabilities, not skinning capabilities, generally; skinning is  
accomplished at a system level only by hacks such as Unsanity's  
Shapeshifter, as there is no concept of a modular or configurable  
window manager in Mac OS X.

I don't think there's any place for the Adium Contact List Color Theme  
and Layout Xtras, which define a ton of parameters which the Pidgin  
Contact List is simply not set up to do (nor would it want to do in  
almost all cases).   Going through the other xtras, some avenues for  
pretty straightforward customization are brought up which Adium's  
users, at least, have found a lot of pleasure through which require  
minimal UI preference addition/complication:

Emoticons: Highly relevant.  Just an XML file with some graphics  
files, in a folder.  Pidgin currently has emoticon packs, right?
Sound Sets: Highly relevant. Again, an XML file with sound files  
(typically MP3s or AACs - anything that Apple QuickTime can read is  
technically allowed by the specification).
Status Icons: Highly relevant. As above.  The XML file allows  
different icons to be specified for the tabs and the contact list.
Service Icons: Highly relevant. As above.
---
Menu Bar Icons: I guess these could be supported as replacements for  
the Taskbar Icon seen in Windows (and perhaps in some window  
managers?).  Barely relevant.
---
AppleScripts: These are primarily installable keyword triggers that  
run an AppleScript, much like a perl script could be run.  Irrelevant  
to anything not running on Mac OS X, so generally irrelevant to Pidgin.
Message Styles: CSS + HTML.  The most far-reaching of the  
customizations available in Adium; if Pidgin were using an HTML view  
to render messages, support would make a lot of sense.  Without that,  
there's clearly no place for overlap or compatibility.
Dock Icons: Irrelevant for Pidgin
Plugins: Irrelevent for Pidgin.

-Evan

On Oct 11, 2007, at 3:08 PM, Ethan Blanton wrote:

> Luke Schierer spake unto us the following wisdom:
>>> Note however that Adium's widget themes are *far less* flexible than
>>> Gtk+ widget themes in many ways, and what looks good in a buddy list
>>> may or may not look good in other dialogs and windows.  This may  
>>> be an
>>> argument for handling Adium themes inside Pidgin, and restricting
>>> their effect to the widgets which comprise the buddy list.